I mean, the game HAS a sandbox tag and does NOT have a VN tag. You ignoring those things isn't on the Dev.
I thought that a sandbox game means that you can go to different places and different times to achieve different goals that are not interdependant on having done particular events on particular times in a particular order.
Here's a definition by Merriam-Webster :
a video game or part of a video game in which the player is not constrained to achieving specific goals and has a large degree of freedom to explore, interact with, or modify the game environment
Here's one by Wikipedia
: sandbox games are based on the ability of giving the player tools for creative freedom within the game to approach objectives
Does this 'game' give you any kind of freedom? NO.
Does this 'game' let you approach objectives in different ways? NO.
Does this 'game' follow a single strict predetermined path set out by the dev? YES.
How exactly isn't this a linear game?
This is not a sandbox game. It's a VN cut in zillion pieces that even with the
'walkthorugh' (to use the spelling by the dev) still depends on you doing a certain thing at a certain time at a certain place to get a certain outcome so as to progress the story in a certain way.
There are
zero choices that I have seen that make the story branch. A 'wrong' choice doesn't close a particular branch, it only delays the progress you make or not make. And if you haven't made enough progress then you can't continue to the next chapter nor can you do anything that you haven't done before. The only freedom you have is doing the right thing at the right time at the right place (whatever that is according to the DEV) or ......not.
So please, tell me, why does anyone think this is a sandbox game?
Let's sum up the things that people claim about this 'game' :
1/ Great story.
ROFL, if you think that I guess you think 'Green eggs and ham' is Nobel price of literature level writing.
2/ Great animation.
Except for the one animation at the title screen there's not one single halfway decent animation.
The so called animations in game means a few renders to display that an action is taking place. Not even with a loop, just a sequential handful of renders.
3/ Great renders.
Really ? REALLY ?!
It either is brightly light with no descernable shadows in 90% of the cases or if there are shadows then it's only shadows from furniture but not the characters or vice versa (e.g. look at the 3 renders when the MC is in the kitchen contemplating if he's going to do the dishes again, there's some reflections but no shadows, and by the way the reflections of the MC in the tiles just don't make sense)
Or they are nighttime shots which means less brightly light but strangely enough with about the same amount of shadows. After all, sunlight produces the same kind of shadows no matter if it's direct sunlight at noon or the reflection of sunlight on the moon at night.
Look at the renders of when the MC has sex with her on the beach during the day and when doing it at night. So please don't start going on about how great this Dev and his renders are.
4/People not liking it just hate slow burn.
I love slow burn, building up tension, seeing well fleshed out characters grow, the story unfold, ...
There are games with great renders but that have your MC have sex after 2 minutes in the game and every other scene is HC. Really not my thing.
All this one does is make you click like a maniac without any rhyme or reason. The so called built in
walkthorugh just means that you can choose if you want to wear out your mouse on random clicking or clicking to get to the pertinent section of the
walkthorugh to see where you messed up because it didn't trigger the event it was supposed to
.
5/The models !
There's that one shot of the 3 girls standing side by side in a very simimiar pose (Happy hour). Look at them. The differences between them are hairdo , complexion and public hair. Heck even small differences of breast size corrolate to small differences in areola sizes. In other words, the Dev scaled the breasts with a factor of x1.2 or so for each subsequent girl. Small breasts don't have to mean small areola nor do big breasts automatically have big ones.
Did you notice the difference in eyecolor, eyebrows, facial features? No? Neither can I. In fact all the female characters could be sisters and it would make more sense.